Lynne Heitman - First Class Killing

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You don’t know?” I was not doing this right, and he was sensing that he was not the only guilty one in the room. “What’s going on?”

“Angel runs a prostitution ring at OrangeAir. I was hired by the airline to investigate her. That’s why I’m working as a flight attendant. I’m undercover.”

He blinked. Then he blinked again. “You’re not really a flight attendant?”

“It’s my cover job. I’ve been investigating Angel for months.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No.”

He got up and wandered away from the desk. “You’renot a flight attendant. But sheis a flight attendant,and she’s a hooker.”

“Yes.”

“She’s not married?”

“No.”

“No kid?”

I shook my head.

He didn’t know which revelation to deal with first, but it didn’t take him long to get to the heart of the matter. “She used me to get to you. That’s what this is?”

“Yes.”

He found his chair again and sat. He put his elbows on his knees and covered his face. This time, when he emerged, it was with a sense of bitter acceptance. “Could I be any stupider?”

“I told you, she’s a pro. She does this a lot.”

“What does she want you to do?”

“I don’t know. I got her fired, but she apparently didn’t stay fired. I don’t know what she wants. She might just be screwing with me.” I looked at him. He didn’t appreciate the choice of words. “Jamie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about this whole thing.”

“What will happen if you don’t do what she wants?”

I didn’t want to tell him that I thought she would do what Monica had tried to do to Arthur Margolies, but he deserved to know. “Probably send it out to everyone in your e-mail address book. Your office, your church, the kids’ schools. Gina.”

As he listened, he banged his head with the heel of his hand as if it were a vending machine and the thoughts he needed had gotten stuck on the way down the chute. It’s what he used to do when he was a kid and he got confused and couldn’t think straight. When he was trying really hard and getting nowhere. I couldn’t stand to see him do that.

“Mother of God. Mother ofGod. What did I do?” His muttering was mostly to himself.

“Jamie, please calm down. I’ll take care of this. I promise.”

“Will you do…what she’s asking?”

“I don’t think it will matter. She won’t give it back no matter what I do. I have to find another way to get it back, and I will.”

“Jesus Christ.” He got up and started swerving around the room, looking as if he wanted to cry but grinning instead. “This must feel pretty good to you, huh?”

I stared at him.

“Jamie fucked up again. Time to pull poor, dumb Jamie’s ass out of the fireagain.”

“That is not what is going on here. I never meant for this to happen.”

“And yet somehow here we are, you rescuing me again, so all is right with the world.”

“That’s crap.” I could feel the conversation tipping, teetering on the edge of the slippery slope. “Stop talking like this. You’re upset.”

“Upset? I am beyond upset. Privateinvestigator? Did you just wake up one morning and decide you wanted to be Magnum, PI?”

“Stop it. Just stop.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing, or have you completely lost your mind? What am I supposed to do now? Should I…should I call the police? Should I tell Gina?” He slammed the wall again, this time with his open hand. “Tell me, Magnum, what should I do?”

“Hey, I might be the one who put her in your life, and I am sorry about that. But if you hadn’t opened the door and let her into your room, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“You get off on this.” There was that jabbing finger again. “You always have. All this bullshit all these years about protecting poor Jamie from mean old Daddy. Big hero, you are. You wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Now I was up, and we were facing each other across the desk, and I could not stop the words that were coming out of my mouth, and I didn’t know where they were coming from. “Is that what Walter said? Is that what the two of you talked about at Christmas? How what he did to you ismy fault?”

He shifted his weight back and chewed the inside of his lip. “That’s what’s really bothering you, isn’t it? That I have a relationship with him and you don’t.”

“Horseshit.”

“The one thing he never did was treat me like a baby or someone who couldn’t take care of myself or make my own decisions.”

I waved a flailing hand at the computer. “Look what happens when you make your own decisions.” He looked as if I had slapped him, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop. “No, he didn’t treat you like a baby. He treated you like crap. He treated you as if you embarrassed him and he wished you were never born. He made you cry. Have you forgotten all that? Because I can’t.” I also couldn’t breathe. “All I ever tried to do was make it easier for you.”

“Maybe it’s the other way around.” His voice was quiet, like the iceberg that sank theTitanic was quiet.

“What?”

“Maybe you kept him from me. You stood in between us so we couldn’t have a relationship, and now that I’m trying to have one, you can’t stand that.”

“That is crap. That is so much crap, I don’t even…I can’t…I cannot believe you just said that.”

“Come to think of it, Mom dying worked out pretty good for you, didn’t it?”

I took a step back from the desk. I had never struck Jamie for any reason, but I had never felt such a compulsion to do it as I did right then. My fists clenched until my fingernails dug into my palms. My eyes hurt. My face hurt. My heart was about to explode. I couldn’t take this. I couldn’t stand feeling this way. I wanted it to end. I wanted to stop this now, so I said the one thing I knew would stop it, would stop everything.

“Jamie, if you believe that, then you are stupid. You’re just as stupid as he said you were.”

The minute I said it, I regretted it. Before it was even all out. I thought maybe…ifI could just throw my hand up and knock those words down, remove them from the one space in the universe where they never should have been-between us. I could grab them and wrap them in my palm and hold them until they stopped burning, turned to ash, and fell to the floor.

His expression never changed, but something underneath gave way. I could tell. Some critical, load-bearing beam cracked and collapsed inside him, and I was the one who had wielded the ax.

Saying good-bye to Gina and the kids had been the hardest. I’d had to wash my face and put drops in my eyes and drops in my nose and wait until I looked normal again. Gina had been so disappointed that I had to leave, but more because she knew we’d had a fight.

“You have to go tonight?”

“It’s a scheduling thing. I’ll come back.”

Sean gave me a kiss good-bye and thanked me again for his new shirt. He wanted to know if I would ever come back. When I bent down to kiss Maddie, she wrapped her small arms around my neck. They felt like two feathers lying there. She didn’t seem to want to let go. I knew I didn’t want her to. Jamie was nowhere to be found. I had nothing to say to him, anyway.

The first number I dialed when I got to my car was the one that started with 800 on Djuro Bulatovic’s business card. He answered promptly.

“Bo, are you after Monica again?”

“No. I told you I would leave her to you.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No.”

That was disappointing. I had no good way to find her on my own. “Will you call me if you hear anything?” I gave him my cell phone number. “Where are you? Are you still in Boston?”